HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE
Inspur | July 04, 2022
The open engineering consortium MLCommons released the latest MLPerf Training v2.0 results, with Inspur AI servers leading in closed division single-node performance.
MLPerf is the world’s most influential benchmark for AI performance. It is managed by MLCommons, with members from more than 50 global leading AI companies and top academic institutions, including Inspur Information, Google, Facebook, NVIDIA, Intel, Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley. MLPerf AI Training benchmarks are held twice a year to track improvements in computing performance and provide authoritative data guidance for users.
The latest MLPerf Training v2.0 attracted 21 global manufacturers and research institutions, including Inspur Information, Google, NVIDIA, Baidu, Intel-Habana, and Graphcore. There were 264 submissions, a 50% increase over the previous round. The eight AI benchmarks cover current mainstream usage AI scenarios, including image classification with ResNet, medical image segmentation with 3D U-Net, light-weight object detection with RetinaNet, heavy-weight object detection with Mask R-CNN, speech recognition with RNN-T, natural language processing with BERT, recommendation with DLRM, and reinforcement learning with MiniGo.
Among the closed division benchmarks for single-node systems, Inspur Information with its high-end AI servers was the top performer in natural language processing with BERT, recommendation with DLRM, and speech recognition with RNN-T. It won the most titles among single-node system submitters. For mainstream high-end AI servers equipped with eight NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs, Inspur Information AI servers were top ranked in five tasks (BERT, DLRM, RNN-T, ResNet and Mask R-CNN).
Continuing to lead in AI computing performance
Inspur AI servers continue to achieve AI performance breakthroughs through comprehensive software and hardware optimization. Compared to the MLPerf v0.5 results in 2018, Inspur AI servers showed significant performance improvements of up to 789% for typical 8-GPU server models.
The leading performance of Inspur AI servers in MLPerf is a result of its outstanding design innovation and full-stack optimization capabilities for AI. Focusing on the bottleneck of intensive I/O transmission in AI training, the PCIe retimer-free design of Inspur AI servers allows for high-speed interconnection between CPUs and GPUs for reduced communication delays. For high-load, multi-GPU collaborative task scheduling, data transmission between NUMA nodes and GPUs is optimized to ensure that data I/O in training tasks is at the highest performance state. In terms of heat dissipation, Inspur Information takes the lead in deploying eight 500W high-end NVIDIA Tensor Core A100 GPUs in a 4U space, and supports air cooling and liquid cooling. Meanwhile, Inspur AI servers continue to optimize pre-training data processing performance, and adopt combined optimization strategies such as hyperparameter and NCCL parameter, as well as the many enhancements provided by the NVIDIA AI software stack, to maximize AI model training performance.
Greatly improving Transformer training performance
Pre-trained massive models based on the Transformer neural network architecture have led to the development of a new generation of AI algorithms. The BERT model in the MLPerf benchmarks is based on the Transformer architecture. Transformer’s concise and stackable architecture makes the training of massive models with huge parameters possible. This has led to a huge improvement in large model algorithms, but necessitates higher requirements for processing performance, communication interconnection, I/O performance, parallel extensions, topology and heat dissipation for AI systems.
In the BERT benchmark, Inspur AI servers further improved BERT training performance by using methods including optimizing data preprocessing, improving dense parameter communication between NVIDIA GPUs and automatic optimization of hyperparameters, etc. Inspur Information AI servers can complete BERT model training of approximately 330 million parameters in just 15.869 minutes using 2,850,176 pieces of data from the Wikipedia data set, a performance improvement of 309% compared to the top performance of 49.01 minutes in Training v0.7. To this point, Inspur AI servers have won the MLPerf Training BERT benchmark for the third consecutive time.
Inspur Information’s two AI servers with top scores in MLPerf Training v2.0 are NF5488A5 and NF5688M6. The NF5488A5 is one of the first servers in the world to support eight NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs with NVIDIA NVLink technology and two AMD Milan CPUs in a 4U space. It supports both liquid cooling and air cooling. It has won a total of 40 MLPerf titles. NF5688M6 is a scalable AI server designed for large-scale data center optimization. It supports eight NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs and two Intel Ice Lake CPUs, up to 13 PCIe Gen4 IO, and has won a total of 25 MLPerf titles.
About Inspur Information
Inspur Information is a leading provider of data center infrastructure, cloud computing, and AI solutions. It is the world’s 2nd largest server manufacturer. Through engineering and innovation, Inspur Information delivers cutting-edge computing hardware design and extensive product offerings to address important technology sectors such as open computing, cloud data center, AI, and deep learning. Performance-optimized and purpose-built, our world-class solutions empower customers to tackle specific workloads and real-world challenges.
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HYPER-CONVERGED INFRASTRUCTURE
Commvault | July 01, 2022
Metallic DMaaS on Oracle Cloud is now a part of Commvault's strategic relationship with Oracle, a leader in intelligent data services across on-premises, cloud, and SaaS settings. Metallic's market-leading services will be made available on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and will be accessible in all commercial OCI regions worldwide as part of Commvault's multi-cloud strategy.
For business customers wishing to hasten their OCI transition, Metallic and OCI will offer improved price-performance, built-in enhanced security, and streamlined recovery and management. In addition, Oracle users may now safeguard crucial data assets in the cloud or on-premises by utilizing OCI Storage for superior air-gapped ransomware protection while preserving flexibility across customer-controlled storage or a SaaS-delivered data protection service inclusive of managed cloud storage.
Metallic DMaaS supports the protection of data against corruption, unauthorized access, and other threats across critical business sectors, such as insurance, financial services, manufacturing, and defense, in the fight against ransomware and cyberattacks. Customers can quickly backup their digital footprint in any consumption model, including cloud-native and on-premises workloads, including databases, virtual machines, Kubernetes, file and object storage, and workloads running on databases and virtual machines.
"The combination of Metallic DMaaS and OCI is a big win for customers looking for data mobility, agility, and security as they link on-premises Oracle solutions to OCI and evolve their data management capabilities."
Vinny Choinski, senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group
Metallic's data protection now covers OCI VMs, Oracle Databases, and Oracle Container Engine, thanks to the addition of support for safeguarding OCI workloads and writing to OCI Storage. Additionally, Oracle Linux is accessible to over 400,000 Oracle enterprise customers and the more than 100,000 clients wishing to use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to protect their mission-critical data but who have previously relied on Commvault technology. As a part of the Oracle PartnerNetwork, Commvault will promote and sell Metallic DMaaS alongside Oracle in a partnership that will hasten Metallic's attempts to become worldwide. Available in the Oracle Cloud Marketplace is Metallic DMaaS.
"We're excited to partner with Commvault and enable our customers to restore and recover their most mission-critical cloud data. Data protection and compliance requirements are necessities in today's business environment, which is why we're confident that OCI's built-in, always-on security features combined with Metallic DMaaS will provide additional peace of mind for our joint customers," said Clay Magouyrk, executive vice president, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
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APPLICATION INFRASTRUCTURE
Runecast | June 29, 2022
Runecast, a leading provider of patented, predictive analytics for on-premises, hybrid and multi cloud environments, today announced a strategic partnership with SVA Software, Inc., a leading IT infrastructure services provider.
The existing relationship between parent-company SVA GmbH, of Germany, and Runecast is now expanded to include SVA Software, Inc. and further the reach of both companies across North America. The SVA Software portfolio includes mainframe optimization solutions, VMware license assessments, infrastructure analytics, data archival and a disaster recovery runbook. SVA models its business on its software and service solutions scaling to meet the needs of its customers' stages of growth and to assist customers in making sense of the data that their systems produce. Customers therefore gain in-depth insights across their systems, enabling them more control in negotiating the next ELA with a vendor.
"The strength of our partnership with SVA GmbH in Germany made it an easy choice to extend that partnership also to SVA Software, Inc. in North America. "Having a channel-first approach to market means that we rely on finding the best local partners to enable Runecast growth."
Ched Smokovic, Chief Revenue Officer at Runecast
Runecast has evolved to be the go-to solution for stabilizing and securing mission-critical IT operations ranging from online shopping and banking to emergency call services and air-traffic control. Runecast is an enterprise platform which brings a proactive approach to various areas of hybrid and multi cloud management and protection. Runecast provides automated best practices, actionable insights and proactive monitoring for VMware, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Kubernetes, as well as OS-level support for Windows and Linux. Coverage for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is planned for its July release.
Recently, G2 reviews ranked Runecast a 'High Performer' in the Spring and Summer 2022 G2 Grid® Reports for the categories Security Risk Analysis, Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP), Vulnerability Scanner, Cloud Compliance and Cloud Security.
"We are happy to add Runecast's unique solution and strength in the VMware space to our portfolio," said Lisa Schwab, VP of Sales and Marketing. "The partnership confirms the commitment in extending an award-winning platform like Runecast to the North American market. Runecast is a perfect complement to SVA's BVQ data analytics platform providing customers with a robust set of solutions to maximize and optimize their IT infrastructures."
The Runecast vision for the future is to stay ahead of the challenges that organizations face in a fast-paced and rapidly changing IT environment, to provide the best possible proactive means of mitigating vulnerabilities and maintaining security compliance and uptime – which aligns well with the SVA approach to business.
About Runecast
Runecast Solutions Ltd. is a leading global provider of a patented solution for IT Security and Operations teams. Forward-focused enterprises like Avast, DocuSign, and Merck rely on Runecast for proactive risk mitigation, security compliance, operational efficiency, and mission-critical stability. Headquartered in London, U.K., Runecast is a Gartner Cool Vendor and has won Computing awards for Cloud Security Product of the Year and Best Place to Work in Digital.
About SVA Software, Inc.
SVA Software, Inc. is a 100% subsidiary of SVA System Vertrieb Alexander GmbH, a German company. SVA Software, Inc. was founded in 2016 selling SVA GmbH developed solutions combined with value added services. SVA System Vertrieb Alexander GmbH is the largest privately owned system integrator in Germany in the fields of Datacenter Infrastructure and is the largest global IBM Systems Integrator. The company was founded in 1997 in Wiesbaden, Germany. SVA GmbH now employs more than 2,200 employees at 25 branch offices throughout Germany with a revenue of more than $1.3 Billion (2021) servicing over 3,000 customers worldwide.
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